Continuing Series, Letter, Longer Stories, Monologue, Original Series, Theme Prompt

SS Pacific: Guilty Conscience

Nancy's Notes 🖊️♬

Inspired by Max’s blog, ‘Old Steam Ships’ –
this is my fictionalized “confession” (and I
use that term loosely) made by an un-named
foreman from an unknown shipyard, written
days after the coroner’s inquest re the SS
Pacific, addressed to no one in particular,
which somehow makes this tragedy even
worse. See my notes on the coroner’s inquiry.

Image by Me & ChatGPT

San Francisco, November 11th, 1875

They have returned a verdict of “sound and substantial,” and God forgive me, so did I, fourteen years past, when I signed my name to the same lie.

I did not lie the way a man lies who means to deceive. I lied the way a man lies when he has told himself the truth so many times it stops sounding like one. She’ll hold. She’s held before. She’s a stouter ship than she looks. I said these things to my supervisor, Mr. Kelly, and to the underwriters and, worst of all, to myself, standing in dry dock with a splitting maul in my hand and half her bottom planks gone soft as bread beneath my thumb.

We raised her out of the Columbia mud in the summer of ’61 looking like something the river had finished with. I will not pretend otherwise, not now. The frames aft of the paddle boxes were sound enough …. good New York oak, Mr. Brown built her honest …. but forward, where she’d struck, and low along the bilge where the water had sat in her for the better part of a fortnight, the wood gave under a fingernail. I told Kelly what she needed. New timber through the whole forward third. New planking below the waterline, fastened and coppered properly, not patched. Six months’ work, easily, and money the company did not have and would not spend, not with the economy the way it was, thanks to the soft Panama trade.

So we found a middle way, as men in my position always do. We found it the way a man finds a middle way between telling his wife the truth and lying to her outright …. we told her enough of the truth to keep our own conscience quiet, and none of it to anyone who might have stopped us. We caulked what could be caulked. We fastened what timber we could reach without opening her up proper. We painted her white as a wedding dress from the waterline to the rail, and Kelly stood on the dock and said she looked better than the day she was launched, and I did not correct him, because I wanted my wages same as any man.

I told myself …. I remember telling myself this quite precisely, standing in the yard with the paint still tacky …. that a ship does not need to be new to be safe. Only sound. And I believed, or made myself believe, that what I had left underneath that paint was sound enough for calm waters and short runs and captains who did not press her.

Fourteen years she carried that lie, and it very nearly held. That is the part I cannot forgive myself. Not that she was rotten …. wood rots, that is no sin of mine …. but that I knew precisely how rotten, and where, and said nothing. I have read the testimony from the inquest. A glancing blow, they called it; the Orpheus barely scratched her. And they ask, all of them, how such a small blow could open a ship stem to stern and pour her under in twenty minutes.

I do not have to ask. I have known the answer since 1861, and I let two hundred and seventy-some souls sail into the dark not knowing it. God forgive me, the fault is mine.

SS Pacific
© MIT Museum

NAR©2026

Nancy’s Notes: At the Canadian coroner’s inquiry, witnesses testified that Pacific’s hull was rotten and leaked badly. Even more, a piece of Pacific’s bow was reportedly found caught in Orpheus’s rigging. The jury concluded that the relatively light collision should not have caused such catastrophic damage if Pacific had been sound and substantial.

This is “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” by Led Zeppelin

SS Pacific (1875): The Fatal Collision

Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated, and may not be used without permission. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.

28 thoughts on “SS Pacific: Guilty Conscience”

  1. A classic example of a job falling short of being good enough. The cosmetic-only repairs made to the SS Pacific (1850) doomed the wooden-hulled steamship when it suffered a relatively minor collision. Originally built in 1850, the ship sank in 1861, was repaired, and was eventually retired to rot on the mudflats of San Francisco Bay by 1872. However, a sudden gold rush in British Columbia prompted owners to pull her out of retirement. Instead of executing vital structural restoration, the operators performed superficial, aesthetic alterations hidden under thick layers of paint.

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    1. There’s no justification for this, no reason for all these people to have died. It’s unconscionable. Thanks for adding this very interesting info, Jim. Great comment.

      PS – I currently have no internet and am at my neighbor’s house just to answer a few comments. Service will not be back on until Monday, at the earliest so I won’t be able to publish my SLS post until then. Just letting you know. Thanks!

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  3. What great minds can come up with. This is a fantastic trip into the guilty conscience and trails we can put ourselves through. Mothership is a great album and this song is perfect for the post, Happy Saturday and bark bark!!!

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  5. Love it Nancy! I think so many felt that way about so many ships, especially before many regulations. They convinced themselves everything was alright, I never thought that most were evil though…just caught between a rock and a hard place…where they soften many obvious things. Thanks again for another great one! I could see this happening…

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    1. Thanks so much, Max. I look forward to your installments each week. I agree with you that this was not done maliciously but I still ask myself how these men didn’t give a thought to the possibility of all the lives that could be lost. Surely a paycheck doesn’t trump a salary. I’m really enjoying our collaboration; I just hope I don’t run out of ideas!

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      1. Nancy you are hitting it out of the park…you REALLY are. Some may be fiction…but I think most of what you have said was true. Just because I don’t think most were evil…doesn’t mean they were right…they cost a lot of lives. The ones I think that were evil were the companies that pressured the people to pass ships like this. When pieces of rotten hull comes out from minor collision…that says a lot.
        Next week…is the most different one I’ve done. I think you will find something.

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        1. Yes, the companion pages are terrific and they help a great deal in my research. I don’t directly use anything that you’ve written (it’s your work, after all) but having a reference point for my research is really helpful. I can’t wait to see what you have lined up for next week!

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            1. It’s a good idea and works well.

              On a different topic. I know you’re a computer guy so you may be able to fill in the blanks. Yesterday our gardeners damaged our cable wires and we now have no TV or internet. Quite by accident I noticed I had cell service on my iPhone (three bars were lit up), so I set my iPhone as a hot spot location on my Mac and now can access the internet. How is it possible that my phone has access to the net but my Mac (when not using the phone’s hotspot) doesn’t have access?

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              1. If I’m getting this right…its because your iphone can connect to the carrier’s signal wirelessly practically anywhere from all the cell towers.
                Your home computer gets its signal from your modem at home…not cell towers. When those lines were cut…it cut off the internet coming into your home to the modem that your computer and TV connects to.
                They make dedicated “hotspots” that work like a cell phone that can connect to your computer… but they are expensive monthly…and they are not as fast as your home modem connection. Many travelers use them to connect from anywhere….but I would rather have a home connection.
                Was I confusing in this?

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    1. That’s exactly what I do, Ange …. immerse myself in research …. and for a few hours, I don’t write anything else. I love it and I’m so pleased you’re enjoying this series. Thanks so much for your wonderful feedback; I appreciate you! 😍

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